The Island of The Lotus Eaters is a land of chemical bliss and abyss experienced in passing on the hero Odysseus’ homeward journey. This title became attached to the first collection of music I made as Ross al Ghul, recorded in Morningside, Edinburgh in 2016-2017. The setting was a living room on in a first floor flat on 42 Morningside road. The room had typical Edinburgh crown molding and an ornate ceiling medallion centering a cheap chandelier with plastic faux candles. Two windows overlooked Morningside road, a casket-size American flag hung over one wall and a large mirror hung over the fireplace on the facing wall. In the corner of the room was a collection of gear amassed by my roommates over the course of our university tenure, including: a set of CDJ800s, a Roland JDXI, a Korg Electribe II, A TR8 and TR3, and a 2-channel focusrite into which I fed live instruments and field recordings. This was the ship on which I traveled to the land of the Lotus Eaters. I probably made 25-30 full “tracks” during that time, as well as countless jam sessions.

The period of time during which I conceived and wrote the record was very productive and joyful. I worked on a book and developed live programming with Daniel Leyland and Nomad Magazine. I played in a band with my close friends called Bizarre Silk, and we performed frequently but never recorded much beyond rehearsals and demos. At the same time, however, I was very exhausted by my school and extracurricular workload, I hardly slept, and I think I was very self-critical and dogged myself constantly about perceived flaws.

There was a “release party” show in 2017 at the Weed Red Bar, where I performed the entire record live with some guest instrumentation by Madison Willing. Sleet Walls and Chuchoter opened, and my friends Tom, Kieran, James, and Nav DJ’d the after party. Daniel Leyland made a large patchwork curtain of various types of fabric to create a divider in the room, and he also made clay “lotus” medallions with ribbon necklaces that were given out to many attendees (I still have mine). I built a frame out of scrap wood found in a skip, stretched cotton mesh over it, and screen printed t-shirts using some graphic elements from the show flyer. I think a few people still have these.

The fire department was called due to the smoke machine early on in the night, and everything was pushed back an hour. At 2:45AM I bought 17 something pints of lager and gave them out to whoever was left, because the additional £100 or so spent at the bar cut our venue rental fee and saved us $450.

The album was supposed to come out the next day, in April 2017, but I never released it. It wasn’t the right time. I was confident with the decision to shelve years of work. I felt good about it and there was no sense of loss or wasted effort. With encouragement from friends I started to revisit the project, and soon I found myself enjoying the process of “trimming the fat”, and this journey began to breathe in a new way. With the Bodywerk fam, I’m ready.